A study reveals that culturally tailored “Food as Medicine” approaches, like the DASH diet, significantly reduce blood pressure in Black and Hispanic adults. By combining healthy recipes with dietitian guidance, participants achieved double the improvement compared to standard methods.
Food As Medicine: There’s some evidence that healthy recipes tailored to cultural tastes, combined with a dietitian’s guidance, can help adults managing high blood pressure see significant improvements.
That’s the finding of a study presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology conference held in New Orleans. It found that a cohort of Black and Hispanic adults who stuck to the tailored Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension regimen saw a drop in blood pressure that was double the rate of those who used other methods.
The DASH diet program is centered on fruits and vegetables, nuts, whole grains and lean proteins, and limiting salt, sugar, saturated fats and processed foods.
“It’s not enough to just tell people to change their dietary behaviors,” said Dr. Oluwabunmi Ogungbe, assistant professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and the study’s lead author.
“We asked, ‘What if we actually prescribe what they should eat, give it to them, coach them on how to prepare those foods in ways that reflect their culture and taste preferences, and then see whether they will be more likely to sustain the change going forward?’”
The participants who followed the DASH program were compared with individuals who received an equal amount of fresh produce — but no guidance on how to cook or eat it. Researchers found that those who got both the fresh produce and the guidance had the greatest benefit.
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